The Gift That Keeps On Giving...

*NOTE*  Anyone is welcome to join the rock painting/finding/enjoying page "615 Rocks Sumner County".  If this is the first you've heard of this, come on over to facebook and check it out!


I suppose today isn't much of a teaching post, but more of a retrospect/reflection post.

I was asked to do a special order last week.  It was a sad one, but one I felt honored to have been asked to do.  I wanted it to be just right.  I wanted the heart and soul and prayers and thoughts that I put into it to reach out and hug its new owner, who would forever have a hole in her life.  This, my friends, is a suicide ribbon:

I included two photos because the color of the paint was hard to photograph.  And of course, as is with all "cause" ribbons, the color is significant.

Now you are thinking....and this has to do with rocks...how????  Well, it has to do with rocks because they say that if any little thing would spark the attention of someone who is about to do this to themselves, the outcome would very likely be different.  We've all read stories, heard of divine intervention, and probably never dreamed that it could be one small thing that we do that could save another...and we may - and quite possibly won't - even ever know.  Quite simply put, a rock you paint or a kind gesture you may make may just save a life.

So goes with the rocks we paint.  The image, the words, just the colorful rock in a sea of many "ordinary" rocks, may be what makes the finder smile that day.  Or maybe someone picks one up, rehides it, and that is the person that needed the message....we never know what one small, seemingly effortless or small thing that we do, such as painting a rock, may do to change another's day, life, beliefs, disposition...similar to The Butterfly Effect, if you will.

To add to my thinking along these lines as this canvas lay on the table where I paint next to rocks in various forms of done-ness, I open up the page "615 Rocks Sumner County" one day this week only to discover that someone has found a rock that I painted, that I put no label on, with a message, that came back to ME on a day I was very much in need!!!!!!  Who would've thought?!?!?!  Not I!  Another "funny" thing...I never took a photograph of this one, because Anna took it and then wanted to hide it right away, and I was doing something else...and now, I have a photo!

So there I was, at my desk, nearly in tears, and lo and behold, I quite (nearly) literally had to eat my own words!

The moral of the story:  You never know what one small thing could end up being so big to someone else....or even yourself!

I'll go back to tutorials and information tomorrow, but I had debated on posting my thoughts, until Lil Red Rock came around, and then I knew I needed to share, so there it is.

Happy Wednesday evening, friends!  :)